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U.S. draft is another surrender: CPI (M)

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has said the U.S. sponsored draft seeking a waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group’s (NSG) sanctions on nuclear trade with India is “another surrender in the offing.”

In a statement, the CPI (M) warned that the Manmohan Singh government, after binding itself fully to the Bush administration on the nuclear deal, will now “go forward to further compromise India’s interests.” A close reading of the draft reveals that several unacceptable conditionalities of the Hyde Act have been incorporated. Now several NSG members are demanding that these conditions be mentioned explicitly. However, “the whole attempt is to see that the text of the waiver is so drafted that will allow the Indian government to claim that it has virtually got a clean waiver.”

“The draft submitted by the U.S. seeking a waiver on sanctions on nuclear trade for India from the NSG and the subsequent discussions makes clear that the Hyde Act conditions will be built into this waiver,” said the statement.

The party said the draft suggested the imposition of several implicit conditions on India. These included the extension of the voluntary moratorium on nuclear tests to a multilateral undertaking, the acceptance of any future changes in NSG guidelines without having any say at the NSG, agreeing to Additional Protocols in the IAEA, embedding the 123 and other agreements in the waiver. It also seeks to put constraints on enrichment and reprocessing as well as other dual use technologies by referring to various sections of the guidelines.

“All of these were to ensure that the NSG waiver conformed to the Hyde Act conditions. Whatever wording the U.S. will make in a revised draft, as in the case of the 123 agreement and the IAEA safeguards agreement, the NSG waiver too will be in conformity with the unacceptable conditionalities of the Hyde Act,” the statement said.

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